Turtles all the way down.

Training: Back on track

First week of being back on my new old training plan, and things are going much better. Although I better just add that as I write this I still have to complete this weekends 8 & 16M runs!However, in the last 7 days I have racked up ~33M. Which is the highest total for quite a while. It might even be the most since I actually did the Goofy back in January.

It has been a mixture of runs with a couple of shorter recovery runs (3M & 4M), some hill sprints (5.5M) a tempo run (~3M more on this in a bit) and last weekends back to back 7M & 10M runs.

The recovery runs where actually nice as I really took them easy and they are short (compared to the other runs), so they could be easily fitted into a lunchtime. Although I had only been running 4 times a week in the old plan, every run was now at 7M+ which mentally is tough as it is at least an hour, plus you also have to consider taking liquids and gels when you are out for that long. All of the runs this week (except the back to backs) could be done in less than an hour which was great.

I do now have a problem as during the tempo run last night the treadmill broke, which is why the run was a mile or so shorter than it should have been. The base under the belt has a crack in it which is definitely not safe for pounding away on! So all the runs now have to be completed outside. This also means I am going to have to work harder to ensure I run the right paces and not just rely on keeping up with the treadmill.

Fortunately it is getting cooler so running outside isn’t so much of a problem. As evidenced by the weekends runs that were both completed during the day, Saturday at lunchtime and Sunday about 9AM. Saturday was good as it was actually hammering down rain when I left so it was really quite cool (my phone didn’t quite appreciate the water though and has spent the week drying out). Unfortunately the battery in the GPS gave up after a mile so I am not sure what I was running at. Sunday was a lot harder as it was much warmer, and required a couple of walks, but taking into account the weather and the walks I still managed to get round in around 4hr marathon pace which is a lot quicker than I could run 12 months ago when I was struggling to make it 10M even in the cool of the predawn runs I was doing.

So this weekend is the first big test of the plan, 24M in just over 24 hours. Saturday is a pace run, so somewhere between 8 – 8:30min/miles and Sunday is just a slow amble round, so around 9 min/mile, although just finishing is the main goal.

I am back to having to get up at < 5AM every weekend for the next 4 months which is going to be tough. But after these two weeks there are only 4 runs longer than 12M left before the Cayman Marathon so things aren’t all that bad.

And in 2 weeks time I will be in Disney for a race which will be nice!